We got back from St. Petersburg just before 9:00 p.m. It was beautiful in Moscow. They had had some rain earlier, but it was all blue skies for our ride from the airport. The seminar came off as planned. It was a pleasure to be in the company of Elder Rasband and Elder Perry. Elder Perry is now 86 years old, but he is a vibrant, enthusiastic, witness of Jesus Christ. He needs no microphone when he speaks!
We got in on Monday morning with no delay and our drivers were there to take us to the hotel. We met with Lilia, our event coordinator and after some arm twisting got her to let us get into the confernce room after dinner, instead of setting up the next morning before the conference started. That was important from my perspective, since I was to be the scribe for an Area Presidency meeting with Elders Rasband and Perry from 10:00 till noon; I wanted to get as much accomplished as possible the night before.
We actually had about a one hour window to take a little tour before dinner, so we called President and Sister Harrison (of the Russia Rostov Mission) to see if they wanted to go to St. Isaac's Cathedral, a 100 yard walk from the hotel. They were in the lobby in seconds flat. We also called President and Sister Bennett (of the Russia Samara Mission) to join us, but they were already on the streets and were lost, so there was no way they could get back to join us.
This cathedral looks more like a government building from the outside because of the massive display of columns. These are huge marble columns. We saw one that had quite a scar on it, and with further inspection, we could not find any seams in the marble and could only conclude that they were one piece and solid to the core!!
Outside of St. Isaac's.
Close up of columns.
Looking out from on top of the cathedral, from the base of the dome. To the left was the Fusion restaurant and to the right was our hotel.
Sister Harrison and Sister Shepard walking around the base of the dome.
Inside view of the cathedral ceilings.
More inside the Cathedral.
Mosaics done in stone.
Close up of mosaics.
A panel from a door to rival Lorenzo Ghibertti's baptistry in Florence.I didn't get to spend as much time as I would have liked in the cathedral. I received a phone call from the St. Petersburg mission. They had arrived with the paintings of Amin. So I left the Harrisons and Sister Shepard and returned to the hotel. Amin is a local artist who was commissioned by the church to paint the 1903 scene of Elder Francis M. Lyman of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles dedicating Russia for the preaching of the gospel (two prayers were given, one in St. Petersburg and one in Moscow. I should have taken some pictures of his artwork, but I didn't. We had about 10 of his paintings displayed in our meeting room.
Later that evening we enjoyed dinner at a "fusion" restaurant (which interpreted means many different varieties of mostly eastern, but also Italian cuisine!!) It was great. We had quite a walk getting to the restuarant in a downpour, but the rains had subsided by the time we were ready to return to the hotel.
By the end of day Monday we had set up the conference room three different times, then on Tuesday morning, we set it up one more time. I called President Bennett and he came down and helped me rearrange the tables for the fourth and last time!
At 11:00 a.m. the sound people came in to install the microphones. They were finished about 10 minutes before the start of the meeting!! Not the way I would have planned it, but that's how it turned out. Just before I was ready to go into my meeting with the Area Presidency, I was asked if we had name tags for the visitors (all of the Mission Presidents, of course, already have name tags). (Sister Shepard had asked earlier in the planning process if name tags were needed, but at that time it was thought they were not.) So while I was in the meeting, she ventured out to find some name tags in gale force winds and rain (her umbrella turned inside out!!), but to no avail. Then, about 30 minutes before our meeting began, the St. Petersburg missionaries showed up with name tags (earlier they said that they didn't think they had any). So these are a few of the experiences that kept us on our toes on day one.
Later that night we went to a concert of Russian singing and folk dancing. At the intermission, I realized that I had left my wallet in a bag which I left in the meeting room. So Chris and I went back with a driver and I found it. I had earlier been asked to redo the table name tags and make them larger so Elder Perry could see them better, so I spent the next hour in the business office typing and printing new name tags. I finished just about the time everyone arrived back from the concert.
Wednesday was our day to go the the Peterhof Gardens (in the afternoon). But it had been so cold and wet, we were concerned that we would have to cancel this activity and go the Hermitage instead. At 10:00 I went outside to check the weather and it was very brisk. We checked with the sisters and they shared our concern about the temperature and the rain remained a wild card. So, we began to make plans to go to the Hermitage. Then we found out that much of what we had invested in the Peterhof trip would be nonrefundable. So we went back outside at just about noon to check the weather one more time. It was a little warmer. One of our concerns was that many of our participants didn't bring coats (after all this was August!!). So we checked with the hotel and they had blankets (for rent, of course). So at 1:45, after lunch, we headed to the Peterhof Gardens. It warmed up even more and the rains never came. The sun came very close to coming out! In fact, with the walking we were doing, the weather ended up being nearly perfect. Most just carried their blankets! Elder Perry tramped through the gardens with us for two hours. He is amazing.
Our group heading for the bus to take us to the hydrofoil. These are boats that have ski type bottoms that lift the boat right out of the water in the front, reducing the drag and increasing the speed!!
Elder Gibbons, with President Cranney (our mission president) and his wife Andria, behind.
Sister Shepard and Sister Gibbons.
On board with Elder and Sister Rasband (left), President and Sister Pieper (center) and Elder and Sister Perry (right).
Sister Shepard and Sister Steinagel.
Fountains in the Neva River on the way to the Peterhof Gardens.
Small canal engineered to take visitors to the palace from the river, which has by now become the Gulf of Finland. This part of the bay has a depth as little as 6 feet and no more 20 feet. It was sometimes referred as Peter's Puddle! A deeper canal was engineered in the middle of the river to allow cruise ships to get to St. Petersburg. According to our guides, these ships have to be navigated by Russian sailors to keep from hitting the bottom.
Our group heading out with one of our three guides. We had two for English speaking visitors and one for our Russians.
Along the canal heading for the Palace. These fountains are over 300 years old. They are gravity fed and require no electricity or pumps. The water comes from a place about 80 kilometers (60 miles) away. There are fountains everywhere, even on the roofs of buildings, as you shall soon see!!
Main cascades.
Central Fountain.
My Eternal Assistant!!
My Eternal Assistant with her Eternal Executive Secretary!!
The church (which we have seen on every large estate). Only this one is a little glitzier!!
Fountains on the roof!
President Bennett and President Steinagel.
Another Fountain!
Flowers. There were many varieties and enough to cut!!
Flower designs!
Whimsy! This was a fun tree that sprinkled water everywhere. Adjacent to this is a stone path that children walk on with their umbrellas held high thinking that there is a magic stone that turns on an arching fountain that shoots over their head. Little do they know that there is a man in a little shed that provides the majic. Peter the Great must have been a bit of a jokster, because there along one of the main garden paths is a series of about 100 jets running for about 50 feet on both sides of the path that shoot toward each other forming an arch. It turns on randomly. We walked across the wet crushed granite path, but managed to miss the fountains overhead.
Another fountain and statuary.
Two little babuskas having fun.
They are still having fun!!
Our mini-group picture. You can see the blankets we rented from the hotel to keep a few of the sisters warm. PS: I just learned how to make my pictures larger, but to make today's post larger, I would have to re-upload every picture. So from now on they should be larger, but I can't bear the thought of going through and re-posting these pictures. Sorry.
One last look before the boat ride back to the St. Petersburg.Before dinner we gathered our group together and took our traditional group picture. There was a nice stairway that accommodated our group quite nicely.
AFter dinner, I worked on my minutes from the Tuesday morning meeting. When I finished I had 5 pages of typed notes.
By Thursday morning we knew we were on the downhill side. There were a number of changes to the departure schedule, but nothing that couldn't be accommodated. The first group departed at 1:00 p.m. A group that had a later departure schedule, went to the Hermitage. Sister Perry went with them, while Elder Perry stayed in the hotel. The day before was quite a hike for him, so I am sure he had had as much fun as he needed. A museum, as you know, is all walking!!
Sister Shepard and I left to go to our hotel for our extra night's stay at 2:00 p.m. We arrived without incident and were back on the streets in no time to check out the Hermitage, ourselves. We only wanted to find the Hermitage, so we could go back the next day, but when we got there, there was still two and a half hours till closing, so we went ahead and went in. The museum was very nice, but the building (The Winter Palace) is even more so. There is nothing quite like it in world, I am sure. The pictures will tell the story, better than I can.
Canal along the way to the Hermitage from our hotel.
Arch leading to the Hermitage.
The Hermitage under construction.
Looking back from the Hermitage to the arch.
The Hermitage without construction.The Hermitage is made up of several buildings including the famous Winter Palace. The contruction was begun by Peter the Great, elegantly completed by Elizabeth his daughter, and actually lived in by Catherine the Great, who was devoted to beautiful architecture. It's heydays were the 18th and 19th centuries, beginning with the death of Elizabeth in 1761. As you can see once we got in, we, like Catherine the Great, were more interested in the architecture than the art!!
That completed our touring for Thursday. We took a stroll down Nevsky Prospect (the main drag in town) and ate dinner at Sbarros. The next morning, after breakfast we headed for Christ Church on the Spilt Blood. This church looks very similiar to St. Basils Cathedral, but it was built much later (completed in 1907 vs. the 1500's for St. Basil's Cathedral) and it is made out of stone.
Here is a little history from Wikipedia:
Construction began in 1883 under Alexander III, as a memorial to his father, Alexander II. Work progressed slowly and was finally completed during the reign of Nicholas II in 1907. Funding was provided by the Imperial family with the support of many private donors.
The Church is prominently situated along the Griboedov Canal. The embankment at that point runs along either side of a canal. As the tsar's carriage passed along the embankment, a grenade thrown by an anarchist conspirator exploded. The tsar, shaken but unhurt, got out of the carriage and started to remonstrate with the presumed culprit. Another conspirator took the chance to explode another bomb, killing himself and mortally wounding the tsar. The tsar, bleeding heavily, was taken back to the Winter Palace where he died a few hours later.
A temporary shrine was erected on the site of the attack while the project for a more permanent memorial was undertaken. It was decided that the section of the street where the assassination took place was to be enclosed within the walls of a church. That section of the embankment was therefore extended out into the canal to allow the shrine to fit comfortably within the building and to provide space on the exterior wall for a memorial marking the spot where the assassination took place. Inside, an elaborate shrine was constructed on the exact place of Alexander's death, garnished with topaz, lazurite and other semi-precious stones. Amid such rich decoration, the simple cobblestones on which the tsar's blood was spilled and which are exposed in the floor of the shrine provide a striking contrast. (We missed the cobblestone shrine.)
In July 1970, management of the Church passed to Saint Isaac's Cathedral (then used as a highly profitable museum) and proceeds from the Cathedral were funneled back into restoring the Church. It was reopened in August 1997, after 27 years of restoration, but has not been reconsecrated and does not function as a full-time place of worship. Right now, it is a Museum of Mosaic. Even before the Revolution it never functioned as a public place of worship; having been dedicated exclusively to the memory of the assassinated tsar, the only services served in it were panikhidas (memorial services). The Church is now one of the main tourist attractions in St. Petersburg.
It is very impressive, inside and out. The inside has about 6 feet of marble wainscoting and then to the very top of the catherdral it is covered with stone mosaics of saints and images from the new and old testaments. It took 14 years just to complete the mosaics. As you can see from the history referenced about that it took twice that long to restore it!!
From a canal bridge next to Nevsky Prospect.
Close up from the same direction.
Close up of gables.
Mosaics.
More mosaics.
Before and after restoration.
My eternal assistant, along the canal!!All in all, St. Petersburg is quite a place. We had a busy, sometimes hectic week, but we had fun just the same!!
No comments:
Post a Comment